We Are Nowhere, And It's Now
by Valhalla
Summary: He's either going to hell or there already." Daniel deals with an unwelcome visitor. Set in the aftermath of 'This Place Is Death'; spoilers until 'The Variable'. Daniel/Charlotte.


**Title:** We Are Nowhere, And It's Now

**Characters/Pairings:** Daniel, Dan/Charlotte

**Summary:** _"He's either going to hell or there already."_ Daniel deals with an unwelcome visitor.

**Rating:** PG-13

**Warning:** Character death(s), general unpleasantry.

**Spoilers:** Up to 5x14.

**A/N:** Set in the aftermath of 'This Place Is Death'. Title from Bright Eyes.

----

She's trying to drive him crazy.

He gets that, he really does.

Why else would there be the visits, the ones that feel like nightmares -- his heart pounds so fast against his chest, and his sweaty palms grip the sheets, but oh no, it's much too real -- out of some twisted fantasy? Night after night, with a predictability almost of clockwork, he stirs, wakes at 3:16 a.m. on the nose and sees the glimpse of red on the outside of his vision, hears the soft incantation of his name.

"Daniel."

She's always there -- _not-quite-Charlotte_, is what he's taken to calling her, a cruel carbon copy of the woman he lost only weeks before. He's still not sure if she's the creation of his own broken mind, or the island trying to drive him to the brink -- stranger things have happened, right? -- but either way he finds himself slipping a little further from what's real with every visit.

The first time, he thought it was a miracle.

Horace had shuffled them into different rooms in one barracks home, Miles and Jin claiming the couches and James and Juliet the other two bedrooms, mercifully leaving Daniel to one on his own.

The blood on his shirt -- suddenly he couldn't stand to look at it, have the still-coppery hint of a smell invade his senses, know it was Charlotte's blood on him (on his hands). He pulled, desperate, at his tie, ripped through the buttons and the T-shirt below -- she'd bled through that too; layer upon layer to his very core, it felt like -- and sat, heaving, on the bed.

He didn't know what to do with himself, body feeling divorced from his mind, limp and useless. Exhaustion won eventually and he must have fallen asleep; he jolted awake a couple hours later, in pitch black, drooling on the pillow.

"Dan."

A whisper, from the darkness. The lilting tone that seemed to speak to something inside of him, beyond his logic or knowledge or the cold, hard numbers that had abandoned him just when he needed them most.

"Dan, it's me."

The figure shifted and moved forward, into the slates of light filtering through the window. _Charlotte_. He felt like his heart was strangling in his throat, but it didn't matter because she was there and alive and oh god. He leapt out of bed and his hands were everywhere -- running through her curls, down her arms, along her cheek -- trying to surround himself with the tactile sensation of her. (_Thank god_, was the jagged refrain in his mind. _Thank god, thank god_.)

"Charlotte -- how? You, you died -- I watched you die."

She shook her head, hair shifting under his fingers. "I don't know; I just ... woke up, in the jungle, and everyone was gone."

He pulled her into a tight hug while she spoke, crushing her body to his; savouring the feeling and awash with joy.

"I started walking, I guess -- it must have been hours -- and I found this place." Her voice was muffled into his neck. "I don't remember much."

The next thought that struck him was a strange one. She should have been warm -- it was a hot night, almost stifling in the little Dharma house -- but instead the body in his arms was freezing. The words against his skin, without any soft puffs of air. No heart hammering against his own. (_Too many questions without answers_, his logical mind tutted; _look at the evidence_.)

_No. Please, no._

He pulled back, almost daring not to look, the familiar press of tears against his eyelids.

"You're ... not Charlotte."

There was a darkness behind her blue gaze. She just shrugged, grinning; she looked almost feral in the half-shadows.

"I'm whatever you want me to be, Dan."

His hoarse cries woke the entire house, sent James and Juliet scrambling into his room. By the time they got there she was gone, and Daniel felt himself break just a little bit more.

----

She came back the next night too.

He awoke with a start, squinting at the alarm clock -- 3:16, the numbers taunted him, blood red -- and then recoiled at the figure slumped on the edge of his bed.

Charlotte was weeping, head perched in hands, her shoulders shaking a little with each silent sob. Something tugged at him to go comfort her, that maybe her skin would be warm and soft under his hands, maybe he could encircle his fingers around her wrist and feel a pulse beating --

She turned her pale, tear-stained face towards him, almost hidden behind a curtain of auburn hair.

"You let me die. I thought you loved me."

Her words, like shots straight through his heart, left him trembling and blank, rooted to the spot in fresh grief. The mattress shifted as she stood, already gliding back into the shadows.

"Charlotte. I'm so sorry ..."

His voice broke on the second syllable but the apology tumbled past his lips anyway, even though this wasn't his Charlotte -- this monster wearing her skin -- and he wouldn't find absolution here, if anywhere. If ever.

She eyed him carefully, her face as beautiful and cold as carved stone.

"It doesn't matter."

Then she left and the bile in his throat was too much and he barely made the bathroom in time. (He didn't eat for three days after that.)

----

By the fifth visit, he slept with a revolver on his nightstand.

(Not that he knew how to use it. Not that it would make any difference.)

----

The island is one sick puppy, he concludes two weeks later.

Or he is.

Or they both are.

That night she visits again and crawls into his bed, drawing one cool, clammy hand up his thigh. She calls his name to wake him, and then soon she's calling his name in a different way, and who gives a shit, Daniel thinks as he threads his hand through her hair and pulls hard, then digs his nails into the soft skin of her back (wanting to hurt her, _but can she even bruise_?), he's either going to hell or there already.

----

Sometimes she tells him about the future, about the life they could have made together if she'd survived. Stories -- told in an almost sing-song voice, pushing their way into his consciousness even as he turns in bed and clamps a pillow over his ears -- about beautiful, red-haired babies and a cozy Oxford cottage and _we would have been so happy_.

She doesn't even have to say the words -- "it's all your fault" is in her cruel smile.

These, he decides, are the worst nights. He never sleeps, even after she leaves.

----

She stands with one hip cocked against the door frame, watching him.

"Daniel."

(He can't stand the sound of his own name anymore.)

Her eyes look muted, steel gray in the dim light, catching on the lone hallway lamp he leaves on every night. (_Afraid of ghosts, genius__?_ Miles had snorted earlier that week.)

"Go away."

He's in no mood tonight, feeling frayed to the end of his nerves with the sleep loss and long shifts at the Orchid.

She moves towards the bed, slow and even, her lips curling upwards into a funhouse-mirror version of the smile he used to love, the cheeky grin that used to make him weak in the knees. It's a pale imitation of the original.

"You don't really want me to leave."

And he doesn't, not really; that's the worst part. That's where the shame is -- he's so desperate for Charlotte, for her _eyeslipshairhandsmouth_, he'll take her any way he can.

He'd kissed her once before, right before the last flash; pressed his lips to hers in some last-ditch effort to find a spark there, like she'd suddenly spring back to life (_oh, my hero!_) and into his arms, like his love was enough to will the air back into her lungs -- but all he'd tasted was blood. It's funny, he thinks, as her seeking mouth finds his once more and the headboard presses sharp corners into his back ... she'd still felt more alive then than she does now.

He pulls away, still only inches between them. "Why are you here?"

Charlotte just laughs, face against the curve of his neck. The sound sends shivers down his spine.

----

He boards the next sub to the mainland, because he can't find the courage to kill himself -- the revolver had moved once, twice, from the nightstand, but even the thought of tasting cold steel stopped him fast -- and because (he clings to this hope desperately) maybe she can't follow him there.

"You'll be back," she'd told him the night before, twisted around his body like a snake, copper-coloured hair spilling over one freckled shoulder. Taunting him, so sure of her own knowledge.

Her words follow him for three years, back to Ann Arbor and the university, haunting the space between every conversation, every equation and formula, clawing further and deeper inside him until he feels hollowed out.

He can't be saved -- not anymore. (But not everyone's damned like him.)

Eventually he's back on the Galaga, armed with a new sense of purpose and a photocopied picture clutched in one hand, racing between the barracks and the Orchid with Miles -- putting all the pieces into place, he thinks, setting up the chessboard -- then into the jungle with Jack and Kate and charging into the Hostiles' camp and when the shot cracks through the air, it's almost a relief.

_You'll be back_ -- the siren song of the island, too strong to resist.

It's the trees, the last thing he notices, hanging dark and heavy over his mother's head -- and then, from the corner of his eye, a flash of red.

_You'll be back_.


End file.
